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How far is it true that equality and inequality are
characteristic of Quantity?
Triangles, it is significant, are said to be similar rather than
equal. But we also refer to magnitudes as similar, and the
accepted connotation of similarity does not exclude similarity or
dissimilarity in Quantity. It may, of course, be the case that
the term "similarity" has a different sense here from that
understood in reference to Quality.
Furthermore, if we are told that equality and inequality are
characteristic of Quantity, that is not to deny that similarity
also may be predicated of certain quantities. If, on the
contrary, similarity and dissimilarity are to be confined to
Quality, the terms as applied to Quantity must, as we have said,
bear a different meaning.
But suppose similarity to be identical in both genera; Quantity
and Quality must then be expected to reveal other properties held
in common.
May the truth be this: that similarity is predicable of Quantity
only in so far as Quantity possesses [qualitative] differences?
But as a general rule differences are grouped with that of which
they are differences, especially when the difference is a
difference of that thing alone. If in one case the difference
completes the substance and not in another, we inevitably class
it with that which it completes, and only consider it as
independent when it is not complementary: when we say "completes
the substance," we refer not to Subtance as such but to the
differentiated substance; the particular object is to be thought
of as receiving an accession which is non-substantial.
We must not however fad to observe that we predicate equality of
triangles, rectangles, and figures generally, whether plane or
solid: this may be given as a ground for regarding equality and
inequality as characteristic of Quantity.
It remains to enquire whether similarity and dissimilarity are
characteristic of Quality.
We have spoken of Quality as combining with other entities,
Matter and Quantity, to form the complete Sensible Substance;
this Substance, so called, may be supposed to constitute the
manifold world of Sense, which is not so much an essence as a
quale. Thus, for the essence of fire we must look to the
Reason-Principle; what produces the visible aspect is, properly
speaking, a quale.
Man's essence will lie in his Reason-Principle; that which is
perfected in the corporeal nature is a mere image of the
Reason-Principle a quale rather than an essence.
Consider: the visible Socrates is a man, yet we give the name of
Socrates to that likeness of him in a portrait, which consists of
mere colours, mere pigments: similarly, it is a Reason-Principle
which constitutes Socrates, but we apply the name Socrates to the
Socrates we see: in truth, however, the colours and shapes which
make up the visible Socrates are but reproductions of those in
the Reason-Principle, while this Reason-Principle itself bears a
corresponding relation to the truest Reason-Principle of Man. But
we need not elaborate this point.
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